Scourge of War Waterloo

just got the message from Matrix FB page:

June 11th should be the release - date for this new game...

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/574/details/Scourge.of.War:.Waterloo



also tomorrow a sneak peak on twitch:

http://www.matrixgames.com/news/1676/Scourge.of.War:.Waterloo.is.coming.on.June.11th

Excellent. Our first MP game will be on the 13th.

WHAT?


I hoped we could form a battle squadron for the 11th later in the day

Better inform the girlfriend that I might not be very attentive that weekend...

Can I suggest we use this thread to discuss the new game and its modding potential?

Looking at the screens on the Matrix page I see flags for individual guns which we know how to deal with And what looks like quite a high sprite ratio. The French cavalry squadrons show only 16 to 24 sprites per unit which I presume is a squadron. That seems to me like about 1:10 or at least 1:8. Last observation is the uniforms and guns look too bright, perhaps we can dull them all down by 'greying' or 'browning' them somewhat?

Amazing, the flags have the battle honors of the unit.

I suspect its a generic flag, same battle honours for every unit. Not sure I like what I assume are Hanoverian or KGL artillery flags, looks like the naval red ensign. I suppose it might be correct but I've never seen anything like it before.

since I am no modder I will be rather silent about these issues: however: the units do appear to be VERY small .... that would be such a shame... I do hope that through modding one can achieve at least the current 1:4 - 1:1, I know, is probably too much to hope for - but 1:10 - jeez - that was back in the days of TC2M

another thing: last night in the Fontenoy game the guns turned almost 60 degrees both ways without being repositioned - looked very odd and I frequently had them repositioned... the other extreme is the Nappy mod where they hardly turn at all...
I am no artillery man per se - but I should think that guns would stay in position but be able to turn what, maybe 15 degrees either direction without moving the entire battery?

I've been meaning to ask are we going to switch the campaign over to the new game as well?

Obviously a re-fight of the entire battle will need to be scheduled immediately upon release.   

I'm wondering though, how will it deal with the Prussians?  Is there a concept of Reinforcements or is the map so damn large that the Prussians already start on the map and have to march for several hours?

Has anyone noticed that in the new screenshots on the Matrix page, the one showing Chasses Netherland divison fighting the French Legere has all of the battalions of green coats  facing the wrong way running away.........   Also interestingly enough, the time is shown as 10:45, before the battle began, yet in the background the Guard most certainly "recule." 

My guess is that this is going to take a long time to get used to and it will need heavy modding before any real satisfaction can be gained.

 I suspect its a generic flag, same battle honours for every unit.

I zoomed in on some of the French ones in photoshop and just from these screenshots, i can see at least two different sets of honors (i.e. the one with 3 rows of honors in the square image) and another one with only 2 honors on it.   So it would appear that there is some variance in this which is a nice detail and one less thing for the moddy people to mod!


The square formation in the screenshot is a bit disappointing...sparse indeed.   Cavalry would run roughshod over that square!

looks cartoony. Probably gonna suck

I don't think we should spend much time focusing on the visuals. Assuming the csv files are constructed similar to the current version's, it will take only a few minutes to get the squares and lines into historic shape. The real question will be whether the game engine fights a believable Nappy battle. If all NSD did was add the ability for the AI to form squares, then we'll have our work cut out for us. However, I'm hopeful they spent the last 18 months working on more than that.

Given our long experience in fighting Nappy battles with the current game, it won't take us long to identify the improvements over what we have now and also identify the areas that need attention. With the AI open for modding, (a gigantic step that really can't be overemphasized), we'll be able to make any changes we like and not have to depend on the good offices of NSD.

I agree, the visuals can always be changed and that's the easy part. The more important part is that the game play like a Napoleonic game and that the AI behaves in a believable way. Having infantry from square on its own and cavalry not charge squares in general are two massive steps forward by themselves that will go a long way in allowing us to have better HITS battles with larger formations. Heck, even I might not even TC all of my troops!

I will say that I'm not a big fan of the interface at first glace. They say it's simplified, but I personally would prefer more complex/detailed, so the toolbar will be among the first things that may need to be edited. Probably speaking too soon and should wait until June 11th to make further comment on that.....

Did I read somewhere that they were planning on making it editable?

Interestingly there are no screenies of the operational level game they're promising. I do wonder whether it will appear at all? I'd rather prefer them to get the basic game right though.

Tom

Apparently, there's a live Twitch-Stream event today (a little more than 3 hours from now) where it will be possible to talk to the SoW Waterloo developers.
http://www.twitch.tv/slitherinegroup

Let's not be too critical until we've opened the box. The short time I spent on the team helping with testing leads me to think the AI will be much improved, especially with regard to formations at the brigade level. The images we've seen of the battlefields are stunning with terrain, buildings and vegetation graphics improved over the existing game.

Everything should be much more moddable and I hope we have scenario scripting that works in MP scenarios - if NSD surely have learned one thing over the last few years its that the future of any game lies in its modding potential and MP capabilities.

I wasn't planning to use Waterloo for the campaign at once. We'll install it and take a look and mod it as we need to first - that could take several months. Another critical factor is will all the old game sprites work with the new one? If they won't then obviously a huge amount of work needs to be done to convert/port them across or start again from scratch. That would be a big delay.

Tom - the Matrix webpage mentions the sandbox strategic campaign game of linked scenarios. I am in the dark as much as you over what it would play like and I also doubt you could do a true MP campaign but if the battles generated can be played as MP scenarios then that would be promising.

indeed - it's interesting how quickly some jumped at the opportunity to judge something we haven't even seen yet, except in a few screenshots... - I only posted the thread to inform those, who did not hear about the release date and tonight's twitch session...

seeing how SoW Gettysburg has changed with all the different mods used in KS here I have every confidence that SoW Waterloo will be even better - maybe not right away - but the restrictions the Nappy mods had with the Civil War engine should definetely be dealt with in a new, Napoleonic era engine - even if they only changed the square formation - even just this little thing would change combat a whole lot and give cavalry again the role that it should have: be decisive if used correctly, but fail miserably if handled badly.

Watching the stream now - the sandbox campaign looks really good!

same here: just saw in chat that default ratio is 1:6 - but you can apparently set it for 1:1

The UI looks good to use, if functional rather than pretty.

Seems the real time and invisible enemy would make it hard to port over the sandbox campaign to MP. Rest of it looks excellent though, really good gui and pathing so much better.

There's still some ugly residue from the original game - same unhistorical capture method for guns (how is this even remotely applicable to Napoleonics, especially the British tactic at Waterloo where the gunners abandoned their cannon to run back behind the protection of the nearest infantry unit, returning to their guns when the danger had passed). Guns look rather ineffective and easy to capture. Units still wheel around the centre, though the actual process has been improved.

I'm eager to get the game and try it out, there's some obvious improvements but at the same time some howlers from the original remain.

I'm also very dubious about some of the flags. The stream showed the crude and inappropriate Prussian flags from the first game and there was a couple of really strange British ones that looked medieval with quartering and gold lions on!

Good points are that each battalion now puts out its own skirmisher company and the pathing looks to be much improved, the AI brigade formation keeping looks better as well.

Contextual GUI looks nice and smooth too; there's effectively no toolbar anymore.

Though I was a bit distracted whilst watching it, I think it is definitely a leap forward and can't wait to play it.
I didn't see any cav/square action but was relieved to hear that the squares are only effective once fully formed.
The ability to give multiple non text orders to courier before sending him off is good. Don't know how easy it will be to determine unit facing whilst in HITS.
Would have liked to see more HITS.
Also interested to see how units will line walls.
Campaign looks nice. Lovely screens.
Well done NSD.
will need a portrait mod, though :-)